


Helwa Everdeen Malark - Reflections on the Hunger Games

by NYCJulieNYC



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: 74th Hunger Games, F/M, Gen, Multi, Panem, Quarter Quell, Reapings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-01 06:02:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4008607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NYCJulieNYC/pseuds/NYCJulieNYC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helwa Everdeen Melark, 24 year old daughter of Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark, sets out to interview her parents' friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Winter Solstice:  Primrose Everdeen

“Primrose Everdeen,” Haymitch said in a low, bitter voice, unable to look directly at the inquisitive young woman who had never doubted that her Grandpa Haymitch loved her best among her multitude of cousins and never thought twice about loving him back in kind. 

Well over 40 years later, the scene was still vividly implanted on his brain. “Your aunt looked so much younger than her 12 years even before her name was even drawn. Once her name was called, the remaining 8,000 pairs of eyes in District 12 looked at her like an orphan kitten you want to fiercely protect from the world’s harsh winds until the end of time. Who in his right mind would want to be sober to watch that tiny wisp of a girl force herself towards the stage to be sent to a twisted nightmare-to-trump-all-nightmares reality show whereby 24 kids fought to the death for the amusement of the don’t-you-ever-forget-it-all-powerful Capitol and the soul-depleting horror of the rest of the nation?” 

“Luckily,” he laughed, trying to break the tension that he alone felt in the conversation at this point, “your Grandpa Haymitch was a bit of a drinker back in the day, so no sobriety on my part was involved.”

“Really, Grandpa Haymitch, why are you being so melodramatic?” asked Helwa. “I have never not known this story. No one in all of Panem does not know what happened. My mother volunteered to take her little sister’s place, went on to win the Hunger Games, sparked a revolution and here we all are today, several decades into peace and prosperity for all of Panem.”

“Helwa. Don’t be so glib. You may know what happened; that does not minimize the horror of that day.”

Home for Winter Solstice holidays, getting ready for her final semester at the prestigious University of Leadership, Society and Governance, Helwa was there to interview her Grandpa Haymitch. She was determined to write a somber monograph of Haymitch Abernathe, the barely-remembered footnote of the Last Great War that heralded the creation of the Panem of Helwa’s own lifetime. 

Not surprisingly, Haymitch had been reluctant about this biography idea. “Helwa,” he had videxed back to her, “it’s awfully sweet of you to think anyone might be interested, but you ought spend your time writing about a nation-building topic that people care about—Aunt Johanna’s work in Oceanic and Atmospheric Harmony or Granny Cicely’s National Healing Service. Many are the ways you can interview your family to write a brilliant thesis that will land you the job of your dreams.” 

Undeterred, and even a little hurt, Helwa shot back: “Grandpa Haymitch, that is not fair and frankly, not nice. You know I try to avoid using insider access to advance my career—whether at university or the rest of life. It’s not my fault if I happen to have spent my summers growing up with a good number of our nation’s most prominent leaders (or, at least, their children).” 

Helwa’s family—including her Aunt Johanna, Uncle Gale, Aunt Annie, Uncle Javier, Aunt Soujie, Aunt Cressida, Granny Hazelle and Grandpa Haymitch—did not consist of her own parent’s biological siblings or parents, but a family constructed during and right after the Last Great War. As far as Helwa could tell growing up, that was how it was with all families. That her Granny Cicely was her own biological mother’s biological mother had confused Helwa as a child. Almost no one’s “granny” was the actual mother who had raised one of your own parents. Things were changing, but the Last Great War cast a great long shadow well into her own time.

Seeing Helwa’s videx calling him “not nice” made Haymitch laugh. “Not nice,” is how people had described Haymitch for most of his life—if they were generous. Helwa could well be the only creature who ever lived who thought of him as the “nicest, kindest, bestest, person in the whole wide world, except for maybe Mommy and Daddy.” Admittedly, even Helwa soon understood that the words scrawled out in crayon as she was just learning to write were perhaps lacking in a certain accuracy. But somewhere, deep down, she still believed them. If Haymitch acceded to her request to tell her how he had spent the years leading up to and during the Last Great War, he knew that she no longer would.

Ultimately, Helwa won out. Helwa was the one person Haymitch could never manage to refuse.

That is how the two of them found themselves sitting alone that first night of Winter Solstice break. Helwa’s parents, her little brother Latif (now taller than her!), and Granny Hazelle were all in Pacifica with the extended family celebrating Latif’s recent engagement. Helwa and Haymitch, at Helwa’s insistence, were instead installed in front of the fireplace in Grandpa Haymitch and Granny Hazelle’s home in what everyone called the Village of Rebels (VR for short), once known as the Victor’s Village of District 12.

Sitting there that first night, just the two of them, in what promised to be a long and painful Winter Solstice season, Haymitch continued:

“As often as not—at least from the inner districts—some of the 24 children whose drawn out battles to the death were broadcast nationwide several weeks each summer, were not randomly unlucky, as the audience for those dramatic Reapings were meant to believe; they were unlucky by design.”

“Yes,” responded Helwa, a little exasperated and beginning to wonder if Grandpa Haymitch thought that recounting well-known points of history with a dramatic voice would placate her, as if she was still a little girl listening to history retold in a ghost-story voice on one of the camping trips with the cousins that had filled the summers of her childhood.

Haymitch continued: “Of course, the tributes—as those kids chosen at the annual Reapings were called—from the lesser districts were generally chosen at random. It was rare indeed that anyone bothered to fix the results of District 12.”

Helwa replied: “In District 12, those kids whose names were on those slips of paper fished out of glass bowls on Reaping Day were ALWAYS chosen at random.” 

“No,” said Haymitch, “not always.”

A little dismissively, with all the authority of an about-to-be university graduate in conversation with an older man who had spent the better part of his eight plus decades of life in what was now known as 12Town, the old heart of a much larger Appalachiana, Helwa said: “How can you say that? There is no evidence to suggest that any tribute from District 12 was ever pre-selected.”

He had decided to do it and the moment had come. Haymitch looked Helwa straight in the eye: “How can I say that? Because I am the one who fixed the results for the girl tribute from District 12 for the 74th Annual Hunger Games.” He paused—no going back now. “I am the one who decided that the name Primrose Everdeen, written on only a single piece of paper among thousands, would be chosen that day.” 

“Wait . . . what did you just say?” 

Without turning away, Haymitch repeated: “The District 12 Reaping for the 74th Annual Hunger Games was fixed. Primrose Everdeen was preselected, as it were, at my insistence.”

Helwa looked at Haymitch quizzically at first, then looked away. Grandpa Haymitch was not joking. He was not disoriented. He knew exactly what he was saying, and what he was saying was awful.

Helwa had hoped for some new information, some important tidbits from history that had been forgotten or overlooked. And yes, if she were being honest, information that only she and her cousins might be able to get because of their family ties with key players in the Last Great War. What she had neither wanted nor expected, however, was to find out that her Grandpa Haymitch, far from being the “nicest, kindest, bestest” man in the world, was, or had been, before the Last Great War, a terrible human being. She began to worry that perhaps that was what she might learn.

Doing her best to maintain her composure, Helwa walked into the kitchen, grabbed two empty coffee mugs and her school bag. She returned, set the mugs onto the old wooden chest table, and pulled out a liter of grain alcohol. 

“Luckily,” she said as she poured, “I have become a bit of a drinker.”


	2. Winter Solstice Day 2:  Thadeus Abernathy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the second day of interviewing Grandpa Haymitch Abernathie, Helwa Everdeen Melark, 24 year old daughter of Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Melark, learns about Grandpa Hamitch's own grandfather, Thadeus Abernathy.

The morning following that first night—which did not last much longer than the mugs full of 190 proof spirits—came and went without Helwa and Haymitch. 

Haymitch opened his eyes around noon, nowhere near as hung-over as he might have been. What had he been doing the night before drinking grain alcohol with his granddaughter Helwa? He was too old and she was too young. As he showered and dressed and readied himself for the day, he remembered exactly what it was he was doing—getting ready to talk about his years as a seemingly incompetent alcoholic while meticulously plotting revenge and rebellion. While he had never been a fool, he had definitely been an alcoholic, although the alcoholism was the least of his sins. Nothing from those years was pretty. Most everything was horrifying—starting with himself.

Burdening Helwa with the brutal reality of who he had been was in some ways an odd choice. His love for his granddaughter was pure and unfettered by anger, desire, unmet expectations, disenchantment, shame, guilt—the varied emotional land mines embedded into almost every other relationship with the people he loved. Haymitch was not sure why he had consented to complicating his one and only uncomplicated human connection. Maybe he had faith that he wouldn’t lose the love of his favorite grandchild. Or maybe it simply that the time had finally come for him to talk.

Sometimes Haymitch liked to think of his tendency toward rebellion as a genetic train he had inherited from his grandfather Thaddeus, a radical who had relocated to Appalachiana right before the Dark Days, when moving from one district to another, although rare, was still possible. Wanting to sow the seeds of revolution among the people, the young botanist left behind his urbane life in the eastern reaches of Panem and moved to the Seam in what was then District 12. Thaddeus became a mediocre hunter, a reasonable gatherer and a decent miner. More than anything, Thaddeus became a failed revolutionary—unless you count not getting killed as a mark of success, in which case, he was truly extraordinary, living well into old age and dying at home in his own bed. Haymitch inherited his grandfather’s large secret library, his hatred of oppressive government, and, to his eternal surprise, his uncanny knack for staying alive. 

Haymitch’s own father, Thaddeus’ son, had no interest in the struggle against the Capital or in the world of ideas, but Haymitch took after Thaddeus on both counts. Haymitch drank in his grandfather’s revolutionary zeal and hatred of injustice with his mother’s milk. By the time he was 12, Haymitch was wading his way through the ancient writings of authors like Rachel Carson, Frantz Fanon, Hannah Arendt and Edward Said buried in crates in the basement of the family home. At 14, Haymitch lost his father and grandfather to a flu epidemic. It was only his grandfather who he truly missed.

Part of Haymitch always wondered if he might have left behind Thaddeus’s farfetched hopes for a different kind of Panem had he not been reaped for the 2nd Quarter Quell. He could have married his high school sweetheart, had a couple of kids and worked in the mines until his body gave out. But he never had that option. He was the last teen standing among the 48 sent to fight to the death in the 50th Annual Hunger Games extravaganza and became the bitter rebel who dedicated his last breathe to overthrowing the government of monsters that ruled his people.

Haymitch was grateful for the Panem that his granddaughter Helwa was born into. The sacrifices of so many over the decades leading up to the civil war (known as the Last Great War) and the overthrow of President Snow, combined with the wise, committed leadership the post-war years, starting with President Sojourner Paylor, created a free, flourishing Panem beyond what Haymitch or his grandfather Thaddeus would ever have thought possible. 

But the choices Haymitch made, the actions he took—well, he had lived with them by forcing the memories into the deepest recesses of his brain. Was getting 12 year-old Primrose Everdeen’s name called in the District 12 Reaping that year the worst thing Haymitch had ever done, or merely the tip of the iceberg? 

In rigging the drawing so that the name Primrose Everdeen would be fished out of the bowl, he knew that Prim, as everyone called her, would not be heading to the Capitol. He was sending Katniss, her big sister, who took all of 20 seconds to volunteer to take her place. He had created that particular moment—melodrama as Helwa had so dismissively described it the night before—to introduce Katniss to the rest of Panem via Capitol TV. (Even before the Last Great War began, he had spent way too much time in the company of Gamemaker Plutarch Heavensby.) 

Katniss Everdeen had the makings of a dream rebel. She was angry, but not bitter, incredibly skilled, but not arrogant, self-reliant, but not isolated. She was committed and compassionate and in no way complicit with the evils of the ruling powers. She had a deep, visceral understanding of all that was wrong around her but was not political. She had never faced the kind of decisions that led to the trade-offs Haymitch had made for years in working with the likes of Plutarch and District 12’s own sleazy Head Peacekeeper Cray.

When Haymitch plucked Katniss from the far reaches of Panem and placed her squarely in the spotlight, she was on the verge of falling in love, perhaps having children of her own (despite her protestations to the contrary) and entering into the adult world of compromise and, for most, resignation. Haymitch caught her at just the right moment—old enough to be effective, young enough not to have mastered her impulses to shatter the world constructed for her by those who came before.

In the end, Katniss became the catalyst for the rebellion that created Helwa’s Panem. The decision to become the face of the revolution had not really been her own however, despite the practicalities of needing her consent before putting her front and center in Plutarch’s propaganda films. Haymitch had found her, chosen her and groomed her for the role. Was he justified in doing so? Mostly, with the help of alcohol and determination, he managed to suppress the question before, during and in the immediate aftermath of the Last Great War. And Helwa’s birth into a safe, warm home filled with loving parents and ruled by a government that would never tear her away to fight deadly games seemed to provide the answer to what he never allowed himself to ask out loud.

But now, after all these years, he had finally turned his mind to sorting out what he had done in his long lifetime. Haymitch had decided the time had finally come to give voice to the buried, tangled knots of his life and that Helwa was the one who would hear it. Helwa would be witness to this reckoning. 

Helwa woke up to the sounds of her grandfather puttering around downstairs. As she stretched and glanced towards the clock, she noted it was well past noon. She knew she had already wasted several hours of the day, but she was not sure she was ready for the questions spinning in her head. She already suspected she had started out with a little too much self-confidence. How could Grandpa Haymitch have chosen Primrose Everdeen, a girl of 12, to be murdered in the Hunger Games? Was the loving grandfather she knew, secretly a monster? Was he going to spend the next few weeks telling her of his history as a psychopath? No, that could not be right. There had to be an explanation. Still, she worried that she was going to get a lot more information than she had bargained for. 

Enough, Helwa told herself, it was time to get out of bed and face the day. In less than half an hour, she was back in front of the fireplace downstairs, curled up with a blanket. Haymitch soon joined her. He reached behind a brick enclosure and pulled out a jug of hot coffee—brewed cold & heated by the fire. Haymitch took his black, but Helwa’s coffee was poured into a cup already half-filled with hot milk and spices. Helwa gratefully took the cup of steaming warmth. 

Helwa was relieved both by the initial silence and Haymitch’s decision, when he finally began speaking, to start at a point much farther back in time than the year her mother first appeared in the Hunger Games--almost 100 years before.

“My grandfather Thaddeus Abernathy,” Haymitch said, “began his life as a small-time intellectual, from a long line of small-time intellectuals, in what used to be known as the Northeast. His family was originally from one of those eastern coastal cities that was swept under the sea in the Great Climate Change. Long before he was born, Thaddeus’ family had ended up in what became District 13—what we now call VerHamLand.” 

“Thad grew up reading history’s great thinkers and sitting through endless evenings where his parents and their friends gathered to pontificate in secret on civilization’s demise. By 17, he thought that if he had to listen to one more discussion of Nietzsche’s nihilism with after-dinner sherry he would explode.”

Helwa laughed to herself. Her group of friends at college liked to gather after dinner with sherry and contemplate civilization’s endless possibilities. What a difference a century makes. 

“Thad had heard rumors of a loosely organized group of rebels known as Revolution Underground, named after a band of the same name. He meant to join them. He tentatively approached a young teacher in training at his high school who he suspected of being a rebel and asked if she could help him join the RU.” 

Helwa interrupted: “This was before the Dark Days, right? District 13 was still ruled by the Capitol back then. Wouldn’t that have been terribly dangerous?” 

“Obviously,” replied Hamish, with a little too much sarcasm in his voice. “Not just dangerous, but outright stupid. If Thad hadn’t been lucky enough to begin his efforts to join the RU with Avideh, he would never had made it to 18.”

Haymitch continued: “Thad told Avideh about his frustration with his parents’ endless readings and theory and his anger at the Capitol. He was ready to fight for his ideals.” 

“In response, Avideh gave Thad his first lesson in discretion beyond simply closing the curtains, locking the doors, and imprudently assuming you were in good company and your home wasn’t bugged. ‘Thad,’ she began, ‘I am going to assume you had a fight with your parents, were dumped by your girlfriend or failed a big test and have temporarily lost your mind. You are a child and one rash moment should not doom you to the consequences of a report to the Board of Patriotism, but I warn you that another such outburst likely will.’ Thad was about to curse at Avideh as a tool of the Capitol and storm out, but something in her tone kept him in his place. ‘Turn your mind to how you can best meet the needs of Panem. Think fewer nonsense thoughts, stay in school and learn how to make yourself useful. If you ever earn the honor of being called upon by the Capitol to serve our great nation, knowledge of our ecological systems and basic healing arts, not to mention learning how to building things other than your sense of self-importance would be a lot more useful than delusions of destruction of our beloved country. Now get out of here before I change my mind about calling the Board of Patriotism.’ Thad, deflated, turned to go. Right before he reached the door, Ms. Avideh asked: ‘By the way, do you ever go to the gym? It’d be a better way to use up your idle and excessive energy.’”

“So,” asked Helwa, “was Thad was wrong? Was there no Revolution Underground? Was Avideh a loyal supporter of the Capitol?”

“No, my grandfather was right on both counts. There was a Revolution Underground—a loose affiliation of rebels that he joined a few years later—and Avideh was already deeply involved.”

“Then what was Avideh doing,” asked Helwa, “mocking Thad and threatening to turn him in?”

“Helwa, if we are going to get anywhere in our fireside chats, you have got to try to put yourself in a time where a misplaced word or deed could lead you straight into the jaws of the omnipresent forces of the Capitol. Think. If you were in a rebel organization, would you want an enthusiastic, incautious blabbermouth—one without a single useful skill to contribute to boot—joining your team?”

“Ok, ok, Grandpa Haymitch.” 

Haymitch sighed. His natural patronizing tone, usually absent in his conversations with Helwa, threatened to overtake him in this conversation. Over the previous 24 years, Haymitch had cautiously taught 5 year-old Helwa how to wield the tiny axe he had made for her to ensure that she wouldn’t spend her summer holidays being outshined by Uncle Gale and Aunt Johanna’s kids. He had gone over her second grade spelling worksheets, her eighth grade science projects and her eleventh grade essays as homework-supervisor-in-chief. As she left childhood and began the arduous journey into adulthood, he had helped her plan her two-year post-high school national service projects and discussed her university choices. He had managed to do this all with the utmost kindness and respect in an age-appropriate but never condescending manner.

As Haymitch spoke about his own grandfather, a precursor to revealing the sordid and sundry details of the years he spent plotting rebellion, the egotism that had fueled his commitment to overthrowing the Capitol was seeping out from the long-hidden places in his soul. 

“Let me get you some more milk for your next coffee and let me get both of us some bread to toast over the fire. Your father stuffed my freezer full of bread before heading out to Pacifica, as if we wouldn’t survive without a loaf a day while he was gone.”

Helwa didn’t complain. Grandfather Haymitch’s coffee and her father’s bread were integral parts of any visit home.

A few minutes later, between mouthfuls of bread and gulps of coffee, Haymitch continued, his manner, he hoped, toned down. 

“Thad spent days reflecting on his conversation with Avideh. The lessons he took away and one day passed along to me served us both well.  
1\. Assume all conversations, particularly those indoors, are being recorded.  
2\. Never trust that the person you are speaking with will not rat you out to authorities.  
3\. If you want to challenge a totalitarian regime, learn how to make yourself useful.” 

“Thad, who had essentially spent his life until that point sitting under fluorescent lights swallowing dictionaries and textbooks, got to work immediately on that third point, learning how to do a few things. In books, he had read about the hardships of mind and body that revolutionaries in prior centuries had endured. He could not survive 24 hours away from climate-controlled apartments and supermarkets with prepared foods. If he had had to run from a dangerous situation, he wouldn’t make it more than half a block before getting too winded to continue. He had no strength, no agility and no ability to fight. He could not build a thing. His rare visits to parks left him overwhelmed by itchy grass and terrified of bees.”

“Thad took up weight-lifting, karate and track. He joined the hiking club, the nature club and the theater club where he picked up basic carpentry—skills he perfected in his years working in theater in part-time jobs throughout his university career. His parents were thrilled that their introverted son had suddenly become more social.”

“Instead of the advanced physics classes his friends in high school were taking, he signed up for botany with Avideh and eventually went on to major in it in college. He chose the major in large part to provide an excuse to continue returning to Avideh for advice and conversation after he had finished high school. Slowly, over the years, she began to trust that Thad’s interest in revolution was more than a passing fad. In quiet, indirect conversation, she began to communicate what was needed to build revolution—people willing to risk their lives to spread the word across the country.”

“After the Dark Days, in the Hunger Games era your parents grew up in, travel between the Districts was extremely limited. In the pre-Dark Days time of my grandfather’s youth, travel was restricted, but much less so. Without being told, Thad figured out a way to combine his bachelor’s of science in botany, his revolutionary zeal and his need for cover while traveling. He became a pharmaceutical representative.”


	3. Winter Solstice Day 2:  Thaddeus and Avideh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the evening evening of their second day together, 24 year old Helwa Everdeen Mellark learns how Haymitch Abernathy's grandparents ended up moving from District 13 to District 12 right before the Dark Days.

Haymitch noticed the winter sun starting to set.

“Helwa, you cannot stay locked up in the house all day. Why don’t you head into town for a bit and I will organize dinner? Some of new Pacifica wines arrived this week. I told Hari you would be by to pick up a few bottles he set aside for me. You can poke your head in a few different shops while you are there and say hello.”

Helwa wanted to hear more about this Thaddeus with an odd-sounding job—pharmaceutical representative. And she was awfully comfortable sitting in front of the fire. But Grandpa Haymitch was right. She had not been to town. It would be a good idea to catch up with folks on Main Street. The beauty of growing up in a small town was that everyone really did know your name and they were always glad you stopped by. Helwa dragged herself out of her comfy spot, threw on some winter-protective clothing and trundled off to town.

Grandpa Haymitch got everything ready for a stir-fry—boiled the grains, cut up the vegetables and soaked in a marinade that tofu thing the kids these days loved so much. Then he sat down to read the December issue of Science Today and waited for Helwa’s return.

A few hours later, when dinner had been made and eaten, and dishes washed and put away, Haymitch and Helwa returned to their spots in front of the fire.

“So what is a ‘pharmaceutical representative’ and what did it have to do with Thad and revolution and you?

“ Pharmaceutical reps worked for large companies that tried to convince people to buy their medications, sometimes as replacements for home remedies, often unnecessary and generally overpriced. This approach worked well among upscale customers, particularly in the wealthiest parts of the country.”

“Thad was hired to market a product called ‘Pantutti,’ a relatively low-cost pain pill that his employer, PanMed, was marketing to the decidedly down-market demographic to which most people across Panem belonged. The idea was to offer it for sale via apothecaries as a first step towards weaning the people off remedies that could be easily prepared from locally available sources.”

“Grandpa Haymitch, that sounds like a terrible goal—trying to create dependency chemical compounds from far away factories.”

“It was indeed a terrible goal, and Thad was committed to making sure it did not succeed. Nonetheless, he saw it as a government-authorized national train pass and an introduction into local communities. In his nine months on the job, he mentioned to visit close to 100 towns and cities across Panem. He did not sell much Pantutti, but he met a lot of people and made a number of contacts for the Revolution Underground headquartered in District 13.”

“In his travels, Thad learned that apothecaries were at the top of the totem pole in impoverished towns and many were far too satisfied with their well-heeled positions and their three square meals a day to be interested in disrupting the hierarchies of Panem. Thad wanted to spend more time with the truly marginalized, the field hand, the factory worker, the miner. Unlike the shop-keeping apothecaries, he could not start up idle conversations or observe them for an hour or two to get a sense of their proclivities. The truly marginalized worked more hours, had a lot less energy for and interest in talking and were much more suspicious of strangers. To make any meaningful connections he would have to go to a single community and stay put. He proposed this new role—professional agitator in a single location—to his colleagues in the Revolution Underground and, pleased with his nationwide network building, agreed with the change.”

“Thad chose District 12. He particularly liked the couple who ran the local apothecary. The mines were expanding rapidly as the rumblings of a civil war grew and the Capitol was stocking up; they hired strong, able-body young adults without asking too many questions. And it was close to District 13.”

“In the years since his first encounter with Avideh, then teacher-in-training, and only four years his senior, he had fallen in love. Both Thad and Avideh were committed rebels first and foremost, but soon after he became a full-fledged member of the Revolution Underground, they had become lovers. Thad did not see a revolutionary role for himself in District 13, but he visited when he could and by choosing to settle in District 12, he tried to make sure that those visits could continue.”

“Breaking into the tightknit community of the Seam, the part of town where the miners lived, was not easy. He stayed in a boarding house of bachelors, mostly transplants from other parts of the country, like himself. These young men were mostly trying to save up enough money to return to their home districts and start families. He knew he would make no-inroads in District 12 as a single man.”

“On a brief trip home, he asked Avideh to marry him and join him in District 12. She readily accepted. Avideh thought that she too could make more of a difference outside the main power centers. This was on the eve of the Civil War, what the Snow Regime liked to call the Dark Days.”

“In the last few months before travel between districts became all but impossible, Avideh and Thad relocated their books, their treasures and their lives to District 12. Upon arrival, they went to the local Justice Building to register their marriage (something they had never bothered to do in District 13) and were assigned a home in the Seam. It turned out to be a particularly fortuitous choice cementing their connection to District 12 right before the Capitol began rounding up those found outside the districts of their official permanent residence.”

“The couple who ran the apothecary helped Avideh to gain an apprenticeship with a midwife named Margaret. It was a good fit for Avideh with her degree in biology and the desire she shared with Thad to integrate into a community which did not take kindly to outsiders. Soon Avideh, not Thad, was the one who people recognized and greeted. She saved someone’s sister on the third day of labor, attended at a difficult breech birth, brought twins into the world. People accepted Avideh, and through her, Thad too was accepted into the insular world of the Seam.”

“Within two years of their move, Civil War broke out. The Capitol became more aggressive in their sweeps through the districts. Anyone residing outside their district of birth became suspect. Large rewards were offered for identifying and turning over these possible ‘outside agitators.’”

“Did anyone turn Thad and Avideh in?” asked Helwa. 

“No. Avideh had brought too many of their babies into the world by that time,” said Haymitch.

“Did Thad and Avideh turn anyone in District 12 into rebels?” Helwa asked next.

“No, that did not happen either. The people in the mines were getting by day-to-day. The merchants in town were clinging to their small privilege. And the Capitol did a damned fine job of terrorizing the whole lot. Many were sympathetic to the cause but virtually none willing to sacrifice their lives in what they saw as a futile cause.”

“But they stayed in District 12 anyway, why?” asked Helwa.

“During the Civil War they were useful. They transmitted messages between rebels traveling through. They offered a safe house. They were able to heal the wounds of some of the rebels who made it to their home and secretly burry others. Even after their activities became known in the Seam, their neighbors never ratted them out. They had become part of the community.”

“Thad and Avideh fiercely opposed the Treaty of Treason that ended the Civil War and set up the Hunger Games. The Revolutionary Underground negotiators, none of whom had set foot in the poorest districts of Panem, thought that the required sacrifice of children would quickly lead to a new civil war and the overthrow of the Capitol. Thad and Avideh tried to get their voices heard in preventing the signing of the Treaty of Treason, but they were ignored—already seen as country bumpkins out in District 12.”

“Thad and Avideh also knew of District 13’s decision to abandon the rest of the country and play dead in return for being left alone by the Capitol. They were both thoroughly disgusted, seeing the leadership of 13 as traitors.”

“In the end, I think Thad and Avideh stayed because they were committed revolutionaries. Thad and Avideh knew that change was a long-term investment, something that did not happen overnight. They saw themselves as part of a struggle that could decades or even centuries. Maybe not in their lifetimes, but one day, they saw that District 12—where people lived the inherent suffering created by the Capitol’s hierarchies and contempt for the dispossessed Other—could be at the vanguard of a meaningful transformation.”

“Did you know these grandparents of yours?”

“My grandfather Thaddeus, yes. My grandmother Avideh, no.

“Avideh died giving birth to a stillborn girl who would have been my aunt. She and my father both knew her second pregnancy had complications. Margaret, the senior midwife, urged them to try to make it to District 13 if they still had any connections, but Thad and Avideh refused. They had chosen to throw their lot in with the people of District 12. They would live and die by that choice. My father was only five years old at the time. I am not sure how much he could have understood at the time, but he blamed Thad for his mother’s death and never forgave him.”

“My father entered the mines at 18. There were no other viable options for a strong young man from the Seam. Other than joining his own father in the mines, he tried to be different in every way that he could. He had no interest in politics or rebellion. He never read a book after he left school. He married a sweet girl who never thought twice about what, if anything, existed outside of her narrow existence in the Seam.” 

“After marriage, my father wanted nothing more than to put as much physical distance as he could between himself and his own father, but the powers that be at the Justice Building decided that a sizeable home in the Seam could not be occupied by an old widower alone, so my father was told to stay put and my mother moved in. It is the house where I was born and where I grew up.”

“So you grew up with your grandfather then?” asked Helwa.

“I did indeed. I loved my Grandpa Haymitch much more than my own father who was permanently bitter and angry. My Grandpa Haymitch taught me to fish and hunt and find food in the greenery. He taught me to read when I was so tiny that I have no memory of learning. Slowly but surely I eventually read through every last book he and the grandmother I never knew had brought from District 13.”

“Oh,” exclaimed Helwa, “so that was the original source of your treasure-filled library. How did your family manage to keep such a large book collection secret from the time of the Dark Days until the Last Great War?”

“No one paraded the books in public, but I am not sure if the collection was ever exactly a secret,” said Haymitch scowling. “And after I won the Hunger Games, the Capitol made clear not only that they knew, but managed to contribute a volume.”

“That is strange,” said Helwa. “I have read a lot of those books in your home that look as if they have lived through several wars. None of them seem like the kind a totalitarian government would want lying around.”

“It made perfect sense to the cruel and arrogant President Snow and his cronies,” replied Haymitch.

“How?” asked Helwa. She noticed that Haymitch’s scowl was more a look of grim determination. He was trying to hold back tears.

“After I emerged as the victor of the Second Quarter Quell, I was assigned a new house—the one we are in right now. The Capitol arranged for movers to take all of our possessions to our new home. My father and grandfather had died a couple of years before in a flu epidemic, but my mother and little brother were moving with me, as your Granny Cicely and your mother’s sister Prim moved with her when she became a victor.”

“We all figured that it would be best if we boxed up the books, hid them in crates in the basement and moved them ourselves at night once the Capitol people were gone. Neither my mother nor my brother cared about the books; I don’t think either one ever read any of them. But they knew the books mattered to me and that was all that mattered to them. I was heading over from my new house to the Seam to meet them and my girlfriend. We were hoping to take over the first set of boxes that night. As I was leaving the new house, I got a phone call from the Capitol. It was about some inane set of papers that needed to be picked up from the Justice Building, signed and returned. I was in a hurry to leave, but the instructions about which forms to sign and where to send them were strangely complicated. I had to grab a pen and ask the woman on the other end of the line to repeat all that she had said slowly as I wrote everything down. It turned out that there were no such papers to be picked up, signed or sent. It was a delaying tactic.”

“How did you figure that out?” asked Helwa

“Because, by the time I got to my old house in the Seam, it was engulfed in flames. My mother, my brother and my girlfriend had all been burned alive.”

Helwa gasped. This was a story she had never heard.


	5. Talking with Helwa:  Gayle Hawthorne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, Gale Hawthorne explains his failed romance with Katniss to 24 year old Helwa Everdeen Mellark, daughter of Katniss Everdeen and Peter Mellark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter begins the second section of my planned longer work, but as it is the third one I have completed, I am posting for now as Chapter 3.

“The weekend before I arrived in 12Town, I sent your mother a note asking her to meet me at our old hunting grounds:”

> Arriving late Saturday. Hunting on Sunday. 
> 
> Beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a rock ledge overlooking a valley. I will meet you there.
> 
> Cousin Gale  
> 

“I’ve seen that note,” responded Helwa. “It’s saved in my parents’ book of memory.” Helwa had never understood it growing up. It had never made any sense. In the last few months, however, she’d come to appreciate just how much shorthand was involved in communication between her mother and all those people who became her family. It’s a wonder they used any words at all.

Helwa was surprised by the smile in Uncle Gale’s eyes. He was clearly pleased to learn that her mother had saved his long ago note in her special book.

“By the time I arrived, your mother had laid out breakfast—goat cheese tarts, berries in yoghurt, two flasks of hot coffee. At one glance, I knew your father must have packed that meal.”

“I had not seen her alone for several months—since the day she shot President Alma Coin. I sat down next to her. We ate in silence and watched the sunrise.” 

What was it, wondered Helwa, with these people and pre-dawn? Left to her own devices, she could easily sleep until noon, but there she was, already hiking up the side of a mountain with Uncle Gale and the sun had not yet appeared on the horizon.

“Life had beaten her up,” continued Gale. “She wasn’t the kid who had volunteered for her little sister for the 74th Hunger Games, she wasn’t the girl on fire, but at least she no longer looked like a crazed presidential assassin. Shell-shocked, but on the mend—like the rest of us back then.”

Helwa had spent months immersed in that period, but conjuring up an image of the wobbly war-ravaged teenager who had long since become her rock-solid mother—well, maybe Helwa would never entirely wrap her head around that one.

“Eventually,” Gale continued, “I turned to your mother and said: “`I am getting married.’ I can still remember how tense I was when the words came out. I had been careful to sit between Katniss and her bow and arrow, and made sure the bread knife was beyond her immediate reach. I was also prepared to hold her for hours if need be. (My own mother, Granny Hazelle, was cooking up a big supper that night. She had strict instructions to get meat from the butcher if we did not appear by mid-afternoon.)”

“I know,” said Helwa, “that I did not arrive on the scene until more than a decade later, but I cannot imagine you and my mother as a couple. I mean, you were practically cousins. And . . . my parents fit so well together. It’s hard to imagine that it could be any other way.”

Gale laughed. “I am pretty sure that by the day I told your mother I was getting married, we were both coming to the same conclusion. It’s easy to see now, but back then, well, we were all trying to find our footing.”

Helwa, already sorry she had broken Uncle Gale’s flow, asked him to continue recounting that early fall morning several decades earlier.

“After a pause, your mother asked: ‘Anyone I know?’”

“As I let the words come out, I braced myself for getting punched or slapped or scratched or kicked. ‘Johanna Mason.’”

Cringing, Gale continued: “I was so young—20, maybe 21—but really there is no excuse for what I said next.” `I met her when I volunteered to go on a stealth mission into the Capitol to rescue someone who many considered a traitor—the man I believe shares your bed every night.’ Such a petty thing to say—the last gasp of bitter anger over a never-consummated love affair rapped up inside of tension and fear over how your mother would react.”

“Your mother didn’t miss a beat. ‘Yes, thank you for that.’ And then she burst out laughing. I felt my muscles relaxing. I knew it was going to be OK.”

Gale looked at the young girl listening—or rather, young woman. He caught her smirk at the phrase "never-consummated love affair."

Physical intimacy was not a topic Gale spoke about out loud. But somehow he could not let this pass. Had Haymitch told her that right before Helwa’s parents were married, Gale spent several days with Katniss in 12Town when Johanna, Peeta and Haymitch were in Galvastonia visiting Annie and Javier? What had Haymitch implied? What had Helwa inferred?

Looking her straight in the eye, Gale blurted out, "Helwa Everdeen Mellark, I never slept with your mother."

Holding his gaze, Helwa responded with what sounded like a taunt: “Uncle Gale, you are answering a question I never asked.”

Like hell you didn’t, thought Gale. 

Gale considered how he had found himself in this conversation in the first place. He was not talkative by nature. Much like Haymitch, he had resisted decades of requests for interviews, countless opportunities to ‘contribute to history’ by baring his soul to the people of Panem. If not for his friendship with President Sojourner Truth Paylor and her wife, filmmaker Cressida Rivers, he likely never would have uttered a personal word in public again after the war ended. And even then, he had not said much.

Why was he talking now? Well, there had been the New Year’s Eve Massacre—the night Helwa denounced Haymitch, her parents and their entire generation. After that, Johanna had insisted he spend some time with the girl. 

As he thought about it, he realized it was something more—a need to set the record straight. Not for Panem, but for Katniss’ daughter Helwa and through her, for Katniss and for himself. Decades had gone by. Relationships had been resolved and reconstructed. The retelling at this distance would seal the rebirth that had flourished after all that devastation.

A little wearily, Gale said, “Tell me what you know about my relationship with your mother, and I’ll fill in the gaps as best I can. We have hours ahead of this on this hike. We might as well get it all out.”

As with Grandpa Haymitch months earlier, Helwa knew she had won. She was about to get the full, unvarnished truth out of her Uncle Gale. Unlike her first night with Grandpa Haymitch, she was apprehensive. She suspected she was not going to like what she heard. But this far into the exploration of the Last Great War—or, why doesn’t she just admit it, her parents’ lives—she knew she was not turning back. 

Helwa took a deep breath, and took the plunge.

"For starters, you and my mother were not cousins, not even close. You hadn't even known each other before both of your fathers were killed in the same mining explosion. You didn't formally meet until you stumbled upon each other in the woods hunting outside the gates of District 12.”

"For the next several years, you were inseparable—hunting partners, friends and . . . ." 

Helwa trailed off. She suspected, but she did not know. Uncle Gale was meant to jump in at that point, to “fill in the gaps,” but he didn’t, so she kept going.

"Then, at the very last general Reaping, my mother’s little sister Prim was reaped. Grandpa Haymitch or rather Haymitch—he is not my grandfather and he came close to killing my mother—reaped Prim to get at my mother. On cue, my mother volunteered and Grandpa Haymitch—why can’t I stop saying it?— set about turning her into the Rebel Poster Child."

Gale broke in. “Helwa,” he said in the harshest tone he had ever used with her, “That man practically raised your parents from their teen years. Your mother’s father died when she was 11 and Peeta’s at 17. Your Grandpa Haymitch never had his own biological children. He lived without anyone to love for close to 25 years and then he opened his heart to your parents.” Warmth began to thaw out Gale’s voice as he said, “and when you were born, the floodgates of adoration opened up. No grandfather could have loved his granddaughter more.”

“Let’s talk about Grandpa Haymitch later.” Helwa bit her lip. ‘Grandpa’ and ‘Haymitch’ naturally merged into a single word in her vocabulary. No need to trip up the conversation right now with efforts to change that. 

Helwa continued: “The cousins thing—someone made it up the first time my parents were in the Hunger Games. Initially, it was a way to shunt you off to the side to keep up the 'star-crossed lovers' line meant to help my parents—my mother really—get out of the 74th Hunger Games alive."

"In their second round at the Games, my father ratcheted up the ‘star-crossed lovers’ theme a notch. He told of a secret marriage and convinced the country that my mother was pregnant. The rumors that spread of her 'miscarriage' when she escaped the Quarter Quell added desperately needed fuel to the rebels' smoldering fire."

"As the war raged on, between my captured father's televised appearances as a traitor, as you so aptly put it, and your increasingly prominent role, there was never a good time to set the record straight. You and my mother were not cousins. My parents weren’t yet married. Besides, at the time, none of you were all that sure what the record was. You needed to figure it out among yourselves before sharing it with all of Panem."

"By war's end, other than Plutarch Heavensby and his crew, no one who had any real idea of what had gone on with the three of you had any interest in letting the country into your private lives."

"Soon enough, you and Aunt Johanna held a great big wedding and my own parents quietly registered their marriage. Folklore has memorialized you and my mother as rebel cousins and my parents as ‘star-crossed lovers’ ever since.”

"But underneath, the story was entirely different. You and my father were waging a mostly unspoken battle that was painfully transparent to everyone around you."

Helwa paused. "How's the accuracy so far?"

Gale winced. "Spot on."

God, thought Gale, she has been paying attention as she rummaged through the skeletons in the closet. Or had all the kids--his and Katniss's--eventually figured it out over the years? It wasn't as if there was a conspiracy of secrecy within the family—Johanna or Haymitch made the occasional joke—but mostly it never came up. Well, there had to be some burning questions that remained, some lack of clarity, or else he would not be knee-deep into this day of uncomfortable conversation.

"According to Grandpa Haymitch, my mother tried to speak to him a day or so before she assassinated President Coin. He responded to her request for help by asking if there was 'more boy trouble.' My mother, apparently, flew out of the room in a rage."

"That I can easily imagine. In fact, the word ‘rage’ does not begin to capture it. I remember arriving in the Capitol at the tail end of that incident.” 

"In Grandpa Haymitch's lifetime of despicable acts, he lists that simple question, 'More boy trouble?’ among his biggest regrets.”

Gale looked up thoughtfully. “I can understand why.”

“Well I can’t. That’s why I am here.”

The winter sun was just peaking over the horizon. 

“Let’s stop for a bit. There is a great spot, a ridge, just a few meters over. “ 

Her Uncle Gale was right. There was a gorgeous view of the sunrise. Maybe there was something to be said for dragging oneself out of bed so early. They leaned up against some rocks and took in the view. Helwa pulled out her thermos of coffee and Gale opened his own flask of still-hot tea. 

“I was 13 the January my father was killed in the mines. I had only begun going out into the woods with him the spring before. It was my mother’s idea. She told him I had to learn how to feed a family sooner or later. Besides, she said, there was no reason for me to be idling about before and after school when he was at work in the mines.”

Helwa smiled. That was her Granny Hazelle. She never saw any reason for anyone to be ‘idling about.’ She was the reason why Helwa could knit and cook and fix just about any gadget known to humanity.

“My father wasn’t the affectionate type. He loved his family. He was responsible. He was just at a loss when it came to small children. He hadn’t quite noticed that I had gone from needing to be looked after to becoming someone who could be of use. Not that he questioned my mother. He had me out the next Sunday in the woods and every Sunday after that, teaching me what he knew. I learned quickly and he began leaving much of the work to me.”

“From what I can glean, Katniss’ father was different. He delighted in having babies, then toddlers, then small children around. He took Katniss into the woods to play. They hunted and fished and gathered, but the main events from Katniss’ perspective must have been swimming in the summers, rolling around in the snow in the winter and singing no matter the season. As his younger daughter never took to the outdoors, the Sundays they spent together were one-on-one between father and Katniss. He taught her survival skills, but she likely couldn’t distinguish between learning how to use a bow and arrow and how to make a snowman. It was all part of playtime with her father.”

“After he died, and Katniss’ mother, your Granny Cicely, stopped functioning for a while, Katniss’s childhood came to an end. She stopped playing games and started taking care of the family. Your mother must have been in shock, because at first, she seems to have forgotten that the woods were not just about spending time with a father who was no longer there, but a treasure-trove of food. Once she remembered, she went after it with a vengeance.” 

“By the time we ran into each other, she had been at it for several months. The hunting grounds outside of 12 were not that big and we were the only two kids around. It is hard to imagine how it took so long. We must have both been covering pretty limited territory, sticking with what we knew. Once we started to work together, all that changed.”

“While I sometimes think your mother was born with a bow and arrow attached to her like an appendage, I know it took her some time to hone her skills after she began hunting for sustenance. At 12, she wasn’t bad. She got a lot better as she had to break things down to teach me. And my trapping skills got better as I explained to her how to set snares. There is something about that process of sharing information with someone else that helps straighten it out in your own mind.”

Helwa didn’t interrupt, but wondered to herself if that was what Uncle Gale had in mind when he agreed to talk.

“We were two fatherless kids responsible for a grown-up task that many in District 12 could not manage, feeding our families daily. It took most of our waking hours, and we spent them together. We were wounded, guarded children who took a while to let our defenses down, but once we did there was no going back.”

Helwa did not comment, but she had observed the wordless way that Uncle Gale and her mother communicated. Like the twins Finn and Rosie, Uncle Gale and Aunt Johanna’s oldest children, Uncle Gale and her mother sometimes seemed like they had been connected in the womb.

“When our friendship began, there was nothing romantic involved. We were too young. And then I was ready to start kissing girls long before she was ready to be kissed—a two-year difference can be an eternity of a gap around that age. I stole kisses here and there from girls my age, but had no time to develop anything with them. I was always in the woods with Katniss. At some point, your mother must have been around 15 or 16, I gave up on any dalliances with other girls. Katniss was the only one I wanted to kiss.”

“Is that when your romance with my mother began, in that last year before she was in the Hunger Games?”

Gale laughed. “I cannot say I ever had a romance with your mother, but if your question is whether we kissed, or declared our love for each other, or anything of the sort, before her first appearance in the Hunger Games, the answer is no. Nothing changed in the way we interacted or what we said. For my part, I simply began to assume we would get married as soon as we could and, in that myopic way of teenagers, I thought it was an assumption that your mother and I shared.”

“In one sense, I was misguided and naïve. Katniss lost her father to a mining explosion and her mother to the depths of depression at 11. She faced losing the two others she loved—her little sister and me—to hunger, poverty and the Reapings. I had not realized the extent to which the annual Hunger Games terrified your mother. She could not control the mines, depression or poverty, but the one thing should could control was having children—if she did not have them, the Capitol could not murder them.”

Gale looked at Helwa again thought about how there were certain conversations he never had. With his own kids, well, his wife had taken primary responsibility for explaining the facts of life. 

Gale continued delicately, “With all the access to information that young people have today, not to mention the years spent in adolescence and adulthood without marrying, the fact that physical intimacy does not necessarily lead to pregnancy and children is relatively obvious, but back then . . . .”

Helwa was amused by Uncle Gale’s discomfort. “Surely you knew about birth control. After all, your families were not that large—you had three siblings, my father had two, and my mother only one.”

“Yes, there were ways to limit the number of children in a family. That likely explains why your father was one of three. My guess is that a girl from the Seam would not have realized it though.” 

“In poor mining families like ours, miscarriages, hunger and illness would have been the main drivers in limiting the number of kids. Remember, your mother’s father and mine died young. We both would likely have had more sisters and brothers if they hadn’t. My youngest sister, Posy, was born a week after my father died.”

“So you are saying my mother refused to date you because she did not know about birth control?”

“No, not exactly. It was not as if anyone in District 12 went out on dates and topics like romance, marriage and children were not regular topics of discussion. I only remember her expressing her reluctance to have children once, the morning of her first Reaping, and I did not attach any significance to it until much later.”

“My point is simply this. By the time your mother was around 15 or 16, without any kind of . . . physical contact . . . or discussion, I assumed we were getting married. Your mother, it turned out, did not share my assumption.”

“In another sense, I was probably right. Had it not been for your mother’s participation in the Hunger Games and the Last Great War, we likely would have married. Marriage was not allowed for those of Reaping-eligible age—not surprisingly, pregnant tributes, as your father’s trick aptly demonstrated, were the last thing anyone wanted. But after that, everyone married.”

“So you would have married by default? Not because you loved each other and wanted to share your lives together?”

“Yes, we would have married by default, but Helwa, we already loved each other and shared our lives together. And your mother, as became evident soon enough, was much more open to romantic love, once she realized that it could be separated from pregnancy.”

Helwa looked at him knowingly, accusingly, like she had caught him out and he was ready to admit his true history with her mother.

Gale realized almost immediately where Helwa was going with his last comment and quickly clarified. “I meant only to say that your mother and father chose to wait 15 years into their marriage to have children. Nothing more.” 

Helwa wasn’t entirely convinced, but she saw no need to push the point now. They would get there eventually in this conversation. She had a different question.

“Uncle Gale, do you think you and my mother would have been happy if you had married?”

This was a question Gale had thought about often enough over the years, and he had a ready answer, or rather answers, plural, as it depended on other questions. 

“If your mother had never been in the Hunger Games, and had there been no rebellion, then yes, we would have been happy, or as happy as anyone could be living in crushing poverty under a totalitarian regime. I was already working in the mines when the Capitol firebombed District 12. Without her participation in the Games, the destruction of 12, or the war, your mother would likely have joined me there at 18. We would have hunted on Sundays and whatever hours we could spare during the rest of the week. Your mother likely would have gotten over her fear of having children, even with the Reapings. It was the main form of protection from starving to death in old age, a period of life that you tended to enter in your 50s, when your body was too worn out to work for money or to hunt. We would have eked out an existence as best we could, finding happiness in moments here and there. That pretty much describes how we spent our teens.”

“If we had ended up marrying right after the war, we would have made each other miserable.”

“Why?”

At this point, they had been sitting for quite a while. Gale stood and offered a hand up to Helwa.

“That requires a much more detailed explanation. Let’s keep climbing. We have a good few hours more before we reach the top.”

“Let’s go back to the day of the Reaping for the 74th Annual Hunger Games. No, that is already too late in the story. Let’s start several months earlier, on a particular cold January day. We were in the Hob, then a black market, where we used to trade what we had hunted and gathered. I noticed a Peacekeeper trying to flirt with Katniss, right in front of me. I was angered and surprised by his brazen behavior with my girlfriend right in front of me. Then I thought, well, Darius has never seen us kissing or walking around holding hands, so maybe he doesn’t know that we are practically engaged.”

“Darius? Like your son Darius? You named one of your children after a Peacekeeper? And one who wanted to steal your girlfriend no less?”

“Well,” said, Gale, “he had other redeeming qualities, and, I gave him the benefit of the doubt where your mother was concerned.”

“Anyway . . . that day, I started thinking about why it was that Katniss and I never kissed or walked around holding hands. I had kissed plenty of girls by that point, and it wasn’t as if I was nervous around her or we didn’t have the opportunity—we spent hours alone with each other in the woods every day. It was . . . .How can I put this? Kissing for the sake of kissing seemed too frivolous of a thing to do with Katniss. I could easily imagine going to the Justice Building with her to get married, sharing a home, living a life together, but squandering precious hunting time with kisses? Somehow, I could not make that work in my mind . . . or in practice.”

“So you never even kissed my mother,” asked Helwa incredulously.

“I did not say that,” responded Gale. “All I said is that I did not kiss her before the first time she went to the Hunger Games. Just listen.”

“There were times back then when I would get so angry about the injustice in our lives—the hunger, the Reapings, the unfairness that pervaded just about everything—that I had to talk, to shout, about all that was wrong. Your mother did not disagree with what I said, but I could tell her patience for my loud voice that scared away game was limited. She was nothing if not practical—one of the many qualities about her that was so appealing. I feared that kissing, like my rantings about the Capitol, might have felt to her like a wasteful interruption into the time and energy we needed to put into finding food.”

“With the Reapings looming over our heads, we couldn’t marry yet. But the Reaping for the 74th Hunger Games would be my last one. Yes, my name was in 42 times that day, and if I had been reaped, I wouldn’t have wanted the death of a fiancé to be added to the list of losses Katniss had already suffered, but as soon as I made it through that last Reaping unscathed, I was ready to make our engagement (already a done deal in my head) explicit.”

“The Sunday after the Reaping, the day before I began working at the mines, I had planned to formally ask Katniss for her hand in marriage. We would hunt and fish and gather but it would be a long summer day and, once engaged (my offer would be immediately accepted), we might even find time for a few kisses.”

“I had thought it would be bad luck for the Reaping to have the ring ready, but that morning, as I was about to head out to the square, my mother silently handed me a small jewelry box. Inside was my great-grandmother’s engagement ring. I set it next to my hunting gear, comforted in the knowledge that it would be right there waiting on Sunday morning.”

“And then Grandpa Haymitch ruined everything. He tricked my mother into the Games and forced her to become a star-crossed lover.”

Gale knew he had to restrain his frustration as Helwa baited him, but it was not easy. It helped that he was getting a little out of breadth at the steep climb and he could keep focused on the path as he spoke. 

“Grandpa Haymitch saved us—your mother, your father, me, and ultimately you—from life under a human-rights violating totalitarian regime.” 

“My Grandpa Haymitch saved my mother from a life without the nightmares of her time in the Hunger Games and a marriage that you said yourself would have been happy.”

“Helwa, your Grandpa Haymitch was a key player in bringing down a government that murdered and tortured daily and left most of us in the districts eking out a miserable existence. He saw your mother’s power to inspire revolution before anyone else did. He guided all of us towards something that we could not see for ourselves, a way out of desolation.”

Not convinced, Helwa said “Sorry I interrupted, let’s go back to the 74th Hunger Games which ended your phantom engagement.”

Gale sighed as he went back to the day of the Reaping. “Like your mother, it never occurred to me that Prim’s name would be called at the Reaping. I was worried about Katniss and worried about myself, but not Prim whose name was only entered once. That your mother volunteered to take her little sister’s place, however, did not shock me. I would have done the same for my brother Rory without blinking. It was instinctive, like falling on a grenade aimed at one of our little sisters or brothers.”

“Why didn’t you volunteer to join her so that you could protect her?”

“I used to ask myself that question all the time after her made-for-TV romance with Peeta filled our screens during mandatory viewing hours and all the more so when I realized she had actually fallen in love with your father somewhere along the way, but it was not something I thought about doing the day of the Reaping.” 

“During the war, your father once answered the question for me. He said ‘She’d never have forgiven you. You had to take care of her family. They matter more to her than her life.’ He was right. Katniss and I had made a pact. If either of us were ever sent to the Hunger Games, we had vowed to support the other’s family. I had to stay or our families might have starved to death.”

“It wasn’t only that. Remember, only one person was supposed to win. Almost immediately, I was convinced that it would be Katniss. Partially, my conviction was based in magical thinking. There was a fair amount of random luck involved. And the Gamemakers often intervened to make the spectacle ‘entertaining.’”

“But when it came to the skills needed to survive that thing, I was right. I knew she’d be the strongest competitor hands down. The Gamemakers confirmed my suspicion when they gave her the highest training score right before those 24 kids were sent into the arena.”

“Still, the watching itself was its own kind of torture.”

“The Reaped kids spent about a week in the Capitol before being sent into the arena. They put them up in silly costumes and had them spout nonsense in televised interviews. It was painful to see your hardscrabble mother dressed up like those multi-colored lollipops we saw in shop windows in the town square. And that was nothing compared to watching your father profess his love for her on national television. I wanted to reach into that screen and rip his throat out. Good thing that Peeta Mellark is about to die in the Games I thought.”

“Early on, I watched a lot of the Games with your Granny Cicely and your mother’s little sister Prim in the house in the Seam where your mother grew up. I had begun working in the mines, had to check the snares in the woods after work and would get to their place pretty late. None of us would have been awake at those hours if your mother wasn’t in the Games, but as she was, well, we would stay up most of the night. 

“I would catch an hour or two of sleep there if I could. Prim gave up the bed she and Katniss shared for me and crawled in with her mother. In that bizarre state of exhaustion and anxiety during those Games, I forgot that victors were given their own homes and huge amounts of money, but remembered that Katniss would be free to marry upon her victorious return, as she would be exempt from further Reapings (or so we all believed). I remember falling asleep in that small bed thinking that if we were not assigned a new home right away after marrying, Katniss and I could fit into that bed for a while.”

“Night after night, my confidence grew. Your mother hunted food and found water. She survived the Gamemakers’ fire. She attacked the Careers—those academy-trained killers from Districts 1, 2 and 4—not to mention that horrible wannabe-girlfriend-thief, with a nest of wasps. I especially liked that. After she finally got her hands on a bow and arrow and blew up the Careers’ supplies, I felt like she was almost home, almost back with me.”

“I started planning to meet your mother at the train station with my great-grandmother’s ring. I figured that if the train arrived early enough in the day, we would have time to get to the Justice Building and be married before sundown.”

“And then Grandpa Haymitch got the rules changed for the ‘star-crossed lovers,’ bringing on the untimely demise of your imagined engagement.”

“Helwa, are you sorry your parents ended up together?” At this point, Gale was beginning to wonder.

“No, but I want you to be angry at Grandpa Haymitch for what he did to you Uncle Gale.”

“Are you sure it was Grandpa Haymitch? It has more of a Plutarch Heavensby feel to it.”

“It was Grandpa Haymitch’s brainchild, but, as with everything else involving the Games, he needed Gamemaker Plutarch Heavensby for the execution.”

“Whether Haymitch or Heavensby was behind it, I am not angry Helwa, not now anyway.”

“At the time, of course, I was enraged. Once your mother began participating in the televised romance in the second half of those Hunger Games, I went ballistic. She had refused my kisses (although I had never asked) but was freely kissing that pasty, half-dead baker’s son. We were engaged (in my mind) and she was cheating on me in front of the entire nation. The agony of that betrayal was unbearable.”

“Once it was announced that two people from the same district could both make it home, I had expected Katniss to take care of Peeta like a wounded animal that could be saved—the way Prim treated her goat. The kisses, the declarations of love, that was unacceptable.”

“Your mother’s berry stunt at the end of those Games—the bold bluff of double suicide meant to show up the Capitol. That I liked. It was a smart move. It was the first time I noticed your mother’s rebel potential.” 

“After that, it is hard to figure out what was going on in my mind. I guess some part of me expected her to show up for post-Games interviews and explain the whole romance thing with Peeta had been for show—a way to save two lives instead of one from the slaughterhouse of the arena.”

“Really?” asked Helwa.

“You know,” said Gale, “I am not entirely sure. On the one hand, that’s a ludicrous thought. There is no way that she could have gone on TV and called out the artifice of the reality-show-murder-fest that was the Hunger Games. On the other, that she continued with the love story during post-Games interviews surprised me much more than it should have.”

“I did meet Katniss—and Peeta—at the train station. I was relegated to the role of “cousin” for the cameras. The one bright spot was your Granny Cicely’s pointed comment that your mother was too young for a boyfriend. Surely, I thought, that was directed at Peeta, not me.”

“The first Sunday after the paparazzi—or riffraff, as I thought of them—left town, I went out to meet your mother before dawn. We had neither of us spoken, but I assumed, correctly, that she would be there. When I saw her waiting for me, I held back. I did not know what I would do or say after all those weeks of treachery, so I just watched her wait. Finally, when she was about to start sobbing, I went to her. She jumped up to hug me, to hold me, but . . . no kisses, no apology, no begging for forgiveness. So. . . not knowing what else to do. . . we spent the rest of the day hunting. Right before we parted, I kissed her and she kissed back. Before she could disappoint me again, I said “’I had to do that, at least once,’ and walked off.” 

“That could not have been the only time.”

“No, Helwa, it wasn’t, but honestly, over the next couple of years, there weren’t too many more.”

What is it with Helwa’s generation and their need to know thought Gale to himself. He had grown up in a one-room shack with three younger siblings yet he could not even remember his parents holding hands. He had committed to explicit honesty with Helwa and was only grateful there was not much in the way of scurrilous detail to tell. 

“Did you ever talk about it with my mother? Did you tell her what you are telling me now?”

“We did not talk about emotions or feelings back then. We still don’t. The reason I agreed to talk with you today. . . well, after what you said to Grandpa Haymitch. . . . ”

‘The New Year’s Eve Massacre,’ as the extended family had taken to calling it. She knew everyone was on a mission to get her to apologize, to see reason, but . . . that evening was off-limits as a conversation topic, at least for now, thought Helwa. Better to get Uncle Gale back to the subject of today’s conversation as quickly as possible.

“Did you ever tell my mother you loved her?”

“Yes, once. We were down by the lake near 12Town. It was the first time I had seen your mother since she’d accepted your father’s marriage proposal made on bended knee in front of Caesar Flickerman.”

“Another one of Grandpa Haymitch’s terrible ideas,” quipped Helwa.

“Actually, that one was your mother’s.”

“Whatever,” said Helwa, not quite believing him. “So what happened by the lake?”

“It was the middle of winter, but my blood was boiling. I was trying, unsuccessfully, to hate your mother, who, rather than disavowing her very public desertion in the months since the Games, had gone ahead and gotten engaged to that pale-faced nobody from town. Out of the blue, she asked me to run away with her. A combination of relief and excitement washed over me. Finally, she was making right what had been so wrong since the summer. She loved me and was ready to give up everything for me. I picked her up, spun her around and whispered ‘I love you,’ fully expecting to hear those words whispered back to me.”

“And,” asked Helwa.

“And,” said Gale, “as with just about everything else between your mother and me after the Hunger Games, I was wrong. She was not thinking of running away with me, she had planned a group activity of sorts—both of our families, Haymitch, Peeta, possibly Peeta’s family. I was more or less included like a cousin. I felt about as significant to the mix as Prim’s cat Buttercup, a pet Katniss barely tolerated for her sister’s sake.”

“Did you stop talking to her for a while after that? Did your friendship come to a halt for a while?”

“That was my plan as I stomped off, but things turned out differently. That afternoon, I found myself in the clutches of Romulus Thread, the final Head Peacekeeper in District 12. He was bent on whipping me to death in the public square and your mother stepped in to stop him. That night, as I lay half dead in Granny Cicely’s kitchen, which doubled as a medical facility, nearly unconscious with pain and morphling, your mother kissed me of her own accord, probably thinking of it as a kiss goodbye before I died.”

“I did not die, obviously. What did happen was that District 12 was put under Martial Law which lasted until that summer when the Capital firebombed us and killed 90% of our population.”

“What happened next with you and my mother?”

What is it with Helwa, thought Gale. What is she after? I am telling her about torture and a wartime massacre and she is asking about a kiss? But then he caught himself. 

“I arrived in District 13 a few days after your mother. The Capitol had firebombed District 12 right after the Quarter Quell breakout. Haymitch met the hovercrafts that rescued us as they arrived in the hanger in 13. He came right up to me as I was entering the tarmac. He said: ‘That girl doesn’t know the first thing about getting pregnant—she’s never been anywhere close to figuring it out.’ And then he walked off.” 

“Haymitch did not say anything else about your mother’s health or your father’s whereabouts. He did not ask me a word about the firebombing of 12 or our escape. The funny thing is, I was so preoccupied with that question—had Peeta and Katniss really been together in that way?—and so relieved by the answer, that I did not even notice how out of place his comment was.” 

“How would Grandpa Haymitch have known if my parents had been together ‘in that way’?” 

Gale looked bemused as he gave an answer he thought was obvious. “Haymitch knew everything.”

"I do not know what was going on between the three of you, or four of you if we add apparently omniscient Grandpa Haymitch into the mix,” quipped Helwa sarcastically, “but it must have been awful." 

“What happened between your mother and me, with your father, with Haymitch, was intertwined with what happened in the entire country—the Hunger Games, the Uprisings, the Quarter Quell, the Last Great War, the overthrow of President Snow, your mother’s suspicion that I had been involved in the explosion that killed her sister’s and her conviction, which proved accurate, that President Coin was behind it, the assassination of President Coin, your mother’s trial and acquittal and then—it was all over.” 

“The war ended. I married Johanna and a year or so later your parents were married.”

“I know the overall big picture. It’s the details that I am missing.”

This conversation needed to end a long time ago, thought Gale. They were almost there. He took a deep breadth and continued.

“A few months before the war ended, your mother and I found ourselves in District 2. Your father had lost his mind under torture in the Capitol and no one knew whether the damage was permanent. Thinking back, it was the only time your mother was open to initiating a more physical, romantic relationship with me after her first appearance in the Games. She was not ready to refute her history with Peeta since the Games, reject him no matter what his state of his body or mind, and declare her undying love for me, but she was open to exploring something with me. That wasn’t good enough. I rejected her.” 

“My reasoning was flawed, but my instincts were correct. We were no longer right for each other.”

“Why not?”

“After the Hunger Games, even if your mother’s District 12 partner had been a 14-year-old boy who had died in the first five minutes and there had been no mention of romance, I was in no way equipped to be a friend, much less a lover, to Katniss Everdeen.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“A handful of the people I am closest to in this world, including my wife of almost forty years, your parents, your Grandpa Haymitch and your Aunt Annie, were in the Hunger Games. To a person, they all say the same thing. There were no ‘victors’ as the Capitol liked to call them, only ‘survivors.’ The struggles to maintain their sanity, even without the rollercoaster of torturous treatment the Capitol subjected them to after they left the Hunger Games arena, were beyond the limited imagination of an 18-year-old boy in love. Yet during the 74th Hunger Games and after, I spent way too much time focused on what it all meant for me. ”

“When your parents came home from their first trip to the Hunger Games, my actions were mostly honorable, but my emotional response was borderline bankrupt. I can say the same thing for my behavior throughout the war. I had no idea of your mother’s nightmares and little capacity to empathize with the terror that pervaded every cell in her body. Unintentionally, I exacerbated your mother’s sense of her world spinning out of control and her misplaced feelings of guilt for the death and destruction all around her.”

“If you were such a bad fit for my mother after she had been in the Hunger Games, what made you such a good fit for Aunt Johanna?”

“Johanna and I became involved right after the war. By that time, I had watched District 12, along with most of its inhabitants, burn to the ground. I had been shot. I had been captured by Capitol forces and escaped. I had watched friends and fellow soldiers die miserable deaths before my eyes. And I had killed more than my share. In some ways, I had managed to level the playing field with Hunger Games survivors. That was part of it.”

“And then being with Johanna felt right in a way that being with your mother never did after she came home from her first Hunger Games. It took me a while to put my finger on it, to be able to articulate what that was.”

“Towards the end of the war, your mother and I were part of a sharp-shooter squad put together not to fight but to make propaganda films. Nonetheless, six out of our original eight managed to get killed in combat of sorts within the stretch of a few days. Finnick, Annie’s first husband, was among the dead. What got him and a few others was a Capitol-created, genetically-engineered muttation—a human-sized lizard-like monster with a reptilian tail and razor-sharp, decapitating claws.”

“With your mother, it was as if she saw me as one of those psychopathic reptilian alien creatures every time I spoke about anything from military strategy to my inchoate rage at the Capitol. I secretly wondered if she might be right.”

“When I began spending time with Johanna after the war, I felt like a person again. She shared my anger, my revenge fantasies, my urge to rant at the evil of the Capitol. It did not make either one of us cold-blooded killers. To the contrary, it had a calming effect to spend time with someone else filled with a similar fury. With Johanna, I was no longer an untouchable beast but a likeable, even loveable, man.”

“About a year or so after we were married, Johanna practically ordered your father and Haymitch to join her in Galvastonia for a visit with Annie, Javier and their kids and sent me to 12Town to spend a week with your mother. Johanna’s idea was that I needed to have an affair to get it out of my system, to be done with it once and for all.”

“Once I arrived in 12Town, it was readily apparent that the desire for physical intimacy had long since evaporated. Katniss and I instead spent our days and evenings together making emotional repairs, as much through silent companionship as in conversation.”

“When all is said and done, your mother and I suffered an incredible amount of trauma. Early on, when we lost our fathers, we were able to sustain and support each other. Later, our reactions to the physical and psychological ravages of the Hunger Games and the war differed. Peeta helped your mother find her way back to sanity and Johanna helped me find mine. Beyond wrongdoing or rightdoing, there were simply different paths and different people who got us through.”

Gale finished speaking right as they were reaching the first major peak. Helwa and Gale stopped to survey the breathtaking view.


	6. Gale and Helwa by the lake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Helwa Everdeen Mellark, 24 year old daughter of Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Melark, goes for a swim, Gale Hawthorne reflects on how his relationship with Johanna Mason began right after the war and how a conversation with Haymitch Abernathie helped him to let go of Katniss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a work in progress. Reactions and comments appreciated.

“You brought your winter swimming togs, right?”

“Yes Uncle Gale. I wouldn’t dare hike anywhere near a lake without being prepared to swim, no matter what the weather, at least not when you are around,” said Helwa, rolling her eyes. 

“Good,” said Gale, ignoring the sarcastic tone. “Off you go for a swim. I’ll hunt us up some lunch. You remember where we like to have picnics, by that big old Tamarack tree, don’t you? Even if you don’t, I’ll build a nice fire so it shouldn’t be too hard to find me.”

“Sounds like a good plan and yes, I know that Tamarack well. I’ll be there in an hour or so.”

Helwa quickly stuffed everything she didn’t need for her swim into her pack and handed it to Gale. “Can you take my bag with you?” asked Helwa as she dropped it as his feet and ran off into the water without waiting for an answer.

No matter, thought Gale, as he easily scooped up her small pack and headed off to hunt rabbits. They multiplied like weeds pretty much everywhere in Panem. 

Gale thought about his conversation with Helwa that morning. Like the rest of the family, he wanted to see Helwa backtrack on her condemnation of Haymitch. He had not made any progress on that front in the morning. He hoped to do better in the afternoon, but he did not know he was going to make that happen.

There had been a time when Gale had hated Haymitch. He had seen him as a bumbling alcoholic who abdicated his annual role as mentor and let the children of District 12 die every year in the Hunger Games. Once Katniss was in the Games, Haymitch’s apparent incompetence became intolerable. And then, of course, he blamed Haymitch for the star-crossed lovers idea that tore Katniss away from him.

Gale’s understanding of Haymitch shifted in fits and starts. In helping prep for the Quarter Quell, Gale came to sense Haymitch’s tenderness towards Katniss and Peeta.  
Gale was jolted into a deeper revisionist view of Haymitch in District 13. President Alma Coin consulted with Haymitch as did Gamemaker and Capitol rebel leader Plutarch Heavensby. Haymitch, apparently, had spent his life deeply entrenched in clandestine networks from the Capitol to District 13. Only after the Last Great War ended did he learn of Haymitch’s vast library of ancient books and his role as intellectual powerhouse behind the rebellion.

In the prairies of the Lowlands, in a makeshift bar in a bombed out warehouse sharing bottle after bottle of red wine, Gale truly began to appreciate Haymitch’s wisdom. A couple of days earlier, Gale had been in Pacifica where he first spent time alone with Johanna.

In Pacifica, after one of those endless meetings that seemed to permeate most of his waking hours in that first year after the Law Great War ended, Gale had ended up swimming late one afternoon with Johanna.

Out of the blue, Johanna asked Annie Cresta and Gale to join her for a swim. Johanna had been repeatedly electrocuted in water when she was tortured in the Capitol. She had been kept out of the final days of fighting in the Capitol because of the flashbacks she suffered when confronted by flooding. Yet there she was, only few months later inviting Gale and Annie to a lake. Annie and Gale exchanged a look of surprise. 

Johanna said to Gale “What? Don’t you know how to swim? Or is it that you don’t have swimming trunks. If that’s your concern, I have two dead brothers who left plenty of clothes behind.” 

It was Annie who spoke up and said simply, “After what you have been through, I did not expect that you would want to swim.”

“That rotting corpse who had me tortured is not going to ruin my life from his grave. I danced in the Capitol’s biggest fountain the day he was killed and I have been swimming every day since.” 

“Then let’s go.” said Gale, “I know how to swim. And thanks for the offer of a bathing trunks.” He did not mention that it was Katniss who taught him how to swim nor inquire about her brothers. 

Annie, pregnant and exhausted, declined. 

At Johanna’s house, Gale changed into a suit that fit well enough and they walked to the lake a few minutes away. Johanna commented on the scars on Gale’s back. People generally didn’t. By the end of that war, most surviving rebel soldiers had souvenirs of suffering about their bodies. No need to call attention to it. 

“How many lashes has that back seen and how often?” she asked, not bothering to start with a preliminary question about the source of the mutilation.

“40 lashes delivered all at once for ‘poaching’—killing a wild turkey—about five months before the Quarter Quell.”

“My brother Bruce was whipped a couple of times. The second time he died the day after receiving somewhere around 50 lashes. He was said to be ‘poaching’ too.” And with that, she jumped into the water and swam off.

Later, Gale went back to Johanna’s place and they spent most of the night talking. Or rather, Gale spent most of the night listening to tales of Johanna’s childhood, her love of the woods that surrounded her home, her hatred of the Capitol, her ongoing desire to rip to shreds every last human being who ever collaborated with those bastards—the last point made with an unending variety of colorful language.

Gale got only a couple of hours of sleep that night. He was grateful for the coffee Johanna made in the morning—strong enough to wake up the dead.

As they walked back to the remains of the Justice Building where tents and tables had been set up for meetings, Johanna said to Gale: “Thanks for hanging out. I like spending time with someone who looks like his heart has been ripped out through his throat and endlessly stomped upon by a gaggle of satanic geese.”  
.  
Gale did not agree with Johanna’s characterization but he let it go. Instead, he asked the obvious question: “Why?”

“I am vain. I like looking in the mirror.”

By then they were approaching others gathering for meetings that were about to begin. As soon as those meetings ended, he barely had a chance to wave goodbye to Johanna before taking a train to the Low Lands.

A couple of days later Gale was pleased to hear that Haymitch was in town for the night. Not surprisingly, Gale found him at the only all-night watering hole around. 

Gayle pulled up a stool next to Haymitch who grabbed a glass for him and poured him some of the good wine that was becoming widely available around that time—no longer kept in cellars for the Capitol’s elite.

“Yes, he’s back in 12. He’s practically moved in, although most of his clothes remain three houses away. And yes, it’s too late.”

“Small talk has never been your thing Haymitch, has it?”

“No Gale. It’s not your thing either.”

Gale finished his first glass of wine in a few gulps. Haymitch filled the second glass which he went through just as quickly. Haymitch filled up the glass a third time.

Gale stared at the full-again wine glass and stopped drinking long enough to speak. “Well, that’s not news—at least not the part about it being too late. That’s been true for I don’t know how long. Prim’s death, that was the final nail in the coffin so to speak. After that, I knew I had been utterly defeated. Katniss would choose Peeta.”

“Gale,” said Haymitch, “you are the one who never chose Katniss. And in the last several months you have explicitly rejected her. What did you expect her to do? Found a new order of nuns and live in a cloister?”

Gale looked at Haymitch quizzically. How much had Haymitch already had to drink that night, wondered Gale, for surely it was the reverse. Gale had spent close to two years longing for a girl who seemed to reject him at every turn.


End file.
